Ralph Winter > Quotes

“The Bible is not the basis of missions; missions is the basis of the Bible.”
― Ralph Winter

“When Americans go to India, we need to learn to understand how Indians see purity and pollution, and to reexamine our own beliefs of “clean” and “dirty.” Keep in mind that India is known for its personal cleanliness and its public filth, and America for its public cleanliness and its personal filth.”
― Ralph Winter, Perspectives on the World Christian Movement: Reader and Study Guide

“The gospel must be distinguished from all human cultures. It is divine revelation, not human speculation. Since it belongs to no one culture, it can be adequately expressed in all of them. The failure to differentiate between the gospel and human cultures has been one of the great weaknesses of modern Christian missions. Missionaries too often have equated the good news with their own cultural background.”
― Ralph Winter, Perspectives on the World Christian Movement

“God’s purpose is a singular purpose with three distinct directions: toward God, for people and against evil. A. Toward God. God desires that worship will come to Him from every nation. Therefore, world evangelization is ultimately for God. B. For People. God intends to bring redemptive blessing to every people. He will redeem a people from every people. C. Against Evil. God will overcome evil powers in order to liberate people and, ultimately, to bring all things under His everlasting and complete governance. This kingdom reign is the substance of the blessing He brings to the nations.”
― Ralph Winter, Perspectives on the World Christian Movement: Reader and Study Guide

“Some people reject the gospel not because they perceive it to be false, but because they perceive it to be alien.”
― Ralph Winter, Perspectives on the World Christian Movement

“History is not a random flow of events, for God is working out in time a plan which he conceived in a past eternity and will consummate in a future eternity. In this historical process Jesus Christ, as the Seed of Abraham, is the key figure. Let’s rejoice that if we are Christ’s disciples, we are Abraham’s descendants. We belong to his spiritual lineage. If we have received the blessings of justification by faith, acceptance with God and the indwelling Spirit, then we are beneficiaries today of promises made to Abraham four thousand years ago.”
― Ralph Winter, Perspectives on the World Christian Movement: Reader and Study Guide

“The Lord of the Rings suggests that God’s victory on Earth (or Middle-Earth) is incomplete unless and until the victory fills the “small places.”…The final battle between good and evil is not some gigantic historic battle—like the destruction of the Death Star—but rather a small fight, followed by a small reconstruction of a very small place. The Good News fills every valley….”
― Ralph Winter, Perspectives on the World Christian Movement

“we need to be careful to locate an ecological dimension of mission not primarily in the need-supplying value of the earth to us, but in the glory-giving value of the earth to God.”
― Ralph Winter, Perspectives on the World Christian Movement: Reader and Study Guide

“Do not pray for easy lives; pray to be stronger men. Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers; pray for powers equal to your tasks. Then the doing of your work shall be no miracle, but you shall be a miracle.14”
― Ralph Winter, Perspectives on the World Christian Movement: Reader and Study Guide

“It is almost impossible to conceive of a strong church within a people that has none of the Bible translated into their own language.”
― Ralph Winter, Perspectives on the World Christian Movement

“The great sin of the world is not that the human race has failed to work for God so as to increase his glory, but that we have failed to delight in God so as to reflect his glory. For”
― Ralph Winter, Perspectives on the World Christian Movement: Reader and Study Guide

“My concern is not with closed doors; my concern is with the doors that are open which we do not enter.”
― Ralph Winter, Perspectives on the World Christian Movement

“Cities are not evil because they are cities. Rather, cities maximize human potential for both good and evil.”
― Ralph Winter, Perspectives on the World Christian Movement

“Traditionally, most mission work was done in rural areas. In the past, that made sense because most people lived in rural communities. But the biggest challenge is now in cities, and there we find a shortage of workers.”
― Ralph Winter, Perspectives on the World Christian Movement

“Isabell Ides was 101 years old when she died last June. A Makah Indian, a member of a whale-hunting people, she lived in the last house on the last road on the farthest northwest tip of the United States. Isabell was known far and wide because she loved and taught Makah culture and language. Hundreds of people learned to weave baskets under her hands. Several generations learned words in their language from her lips. Young mothers brought her their alder-smoked salmon. After chewing a bit, she could tell whether their wood was too dry. Archaeologists brought her newly excavated 3,000-year-old baskets, and she could identify what the baskets were, how they were made, and how they had been used. “It’s like losing a library,” an anthropologist said at her funeral. Isabell also taught Sunday School at the Assembly of God church on the reservation. She attributed her long life to her Christian faith.”
― Ralph Winter, Perspectives on the World Christian Movement

“Suffering Servant of God (Isa 42; 49; 53).”
― Ralph Winter, Perspectives on the World Christian Movement: Reader and Study Guide

“Following World War II there was a great upsurge of missionary concern. Veterans who had fought in the Pacific and Europe returned to campuses deeply desirous to go back and share the gospel with people who so recently had been their enemies. These veterans had seen the world, life, and death in a way few students before or since have seen it. God used them to lead others into an understanding of mission obligation.”
― Ralph Winter, Perspectives on the World Christian Movement

“Man has virtually erased his own story. Human beings as far back as we have any paleological record have been fighting each other so much that they have destroyed well over 90 percent of their own handiwork. Their libraries, their literature, their cities, their works of art are mostly gone.”
― Ralph Winter, Perspectives on the World Christian Movement

“If the pursuit of God’s glory is not ordered above the pursuit of man’s good in the affections of the heart and the priorities of the church, man will not be well served and God will not be duly honored. I am not pleading for a diminishing of missions but for a magnifying of God. When the flame of worship burns with the heat of God’s true worth, the light of missions will shine to the darkest peoples on earth. And I long for that day to come! Where passion for God is weak, zeal for missions will be weak. Churches that are not centered on the exaltation of the majesty and beauty of God will scarcely kindle a fervent desire to “declare his glory among the nations” (Ps 96:3).”
― Ralph Winter, Perspectives on the World Christian Movement: Reader and Study Guide

“The church cannot grow within peoples where relevant churches do not exist.”
― Ralph Winter, Perspectives on the World Christian Movement

“Bishop Phillips Brooks once threw down the challenge of a big task in these words: Do not pray for easy lives; pray to be stronger men. Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers; pray for powers equal to your tasks. Then the doing of your work shall be no miracle, but you shall be a miracle.14”
― Ralph Winter, Perspectives on the World Christian Movement

“Do not pray for easy lives; pray to be stronger men. Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers; pray for powers equal to your tasks. Then the doing of your work shall be no miracle, but you shall be a miracle. 14”
― Ralph Winter, Perspectives on the World Christian Movement: Reader and Study Guide

“Carey brought the English daisy to India and introduced the Linnaean system to gardening. He also published the first books on science and natural history in India such as Flora Indica, because he believed the biblical view, ‘All Thy Works praise Thee, O Lord.’ Carey believed that nature is declared ‘good’ by its Creator. It is not maya (illusion) to be shunned, but a subject worthy of human study.”
― Ralph Winter, Perspectives on the World Christian Movement

“Men Were His Method It all started by Jesus calling a few men to follow Him. This revealed immediately the direction His evangelistic strategy would take. His concern was not with programs to reach the multitudes, but with men whom the multitudes would follow. Remarkable as it may seem, Jesus started to gather these men before He ever organized an evangelistic campaign or even preached a sermon in public. Men were to be His method of winning the world to God.”
― Ralph Winter, Perspectives on the World Christian Movement

“If, however, we regard God and man as competitors and put God’s work against man’s, we soon land ourselves in one of two untenable positions. If we emphasize only the one side, our faith adopts the blind, unbending characteristics of fate; if we emphasize only the other side, we become fanatics and arrogant zealots.”
― Ralph Winter, Perspectives on the World Christian Movement: Reader and Study Guide